ProtonSimulation

ProtonSimulation calculates pristine Bragg peak and prompt gamma spectra in a phantom defined using GDML files.

GDML (Geometry Description Markup Language) is an XML schema for detector description. To use Geant4 and ProtonSimulation needs to be built with GDML usage on (default true). For more information please refer to the GDML website and manual.

This code is based on my master's degree dissertation (in Portuguese with english abstract)

This code uses physics lists implementation from Hadrontherapy

This code also implements scoring methods described at GEANT4 tutorial.

More details at geant4/examples/extended/runAndEvent/RE03

Getting Started

On terminal build-folder:

./ProtonSimulation G4_WATER_GEOMETRY.gdml
 
 or 
 
 ./ProtonSimulation Prompt_photon_simulation.gdml

The init.mac file is always executed.

Python requirements: pandas and matplotlib

The file init.mac is based on GATE proton example

Proton source is defined using GEANT4 GPS

Example result:

ProtonSimulation code can be used to simulate prompt Gamma spectra at Bragg peak.

Python classes:

macroWriter.py and spectraReader.py

Exeample results:

Geometry:

Prompt gamma-ray spectra around 175 MeV proton Bragg peak in water

references: verification of proton range and MGH website

Prerequisites

Build GEANT4 10.x with GDML and QT suport.

See details at GEANT4 documentation.

Installing

Tested on Lubuntu linux 16.04 - The lightest linux distribution I have found.

Use CMakeLists.txt

Easy way:

Try it using cmake-qt-gui

Hard way:

Building ProtonSimulation with CMake on Unix with Makefiles We'll assume, for illustration only, that you've copied the ProtonSimulation sources into a directory under your home area so that we have:

+- /home/you/ProtonSimulation/
   +- CMakeLists.txt
   +- ProtonSimulation.cc
   +- include/
   +- src/
   +- ...

Here, the directory is /home/you/ProtonSimulation, in other words the directory holding the CMakeLists.txt file.

Let's also assume that you have already installed Geant4 in your home area under, for illustration only, /home/you/geant4-install.

Our first step is to create a build directory in which build the example. We will create this alongside our ProtonSimulation source directory as follows:

$ cd $HOME
$ mkdir ProtonSimulation-build

We now change to this build directory and run CMake to generate the Makefiles needed to build the B1 application. We pass CMake two arguments:

$ cd $HOME/ProtonSimulation-build
$ cmake -DGeant4_DIR=/home/you/geant4-install/lib64/Geant4-10.3.0 $HOME/ProtonSimulation

Here, the first argument points CMake to our install of Geant4. Specifically, it is the directory holding the Geant4Config.cmake file that Geant4 installs to help CMake find and use Geant4. You should of course adapt the value of this variable to the location of your actual Geant4 install. This provides the most specific way to point CMake to the Geant4 install you want to use. You may also use the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH variable, e.g.

$ cd $HOME/ProtonSimulation-build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/home/you/geant4-install $HOME/ProtonSimulation

This is most useful for system integrators as it may be extended with paths to the install prefixes of additional required software packages and also may be set as an environment variable that CMake will use at configuration time.

The second argument to CMake is the path to the source directory of the application we want to build. Here it's just the ProtonSimulation directory as discussed earlier. You should of course adapt the value of that variable to where you copied the ProtonSimulation source directory.

Note the Makefile and that all the scripts for running the ProtonSimulation application we're about to build have been copied across. With the Makefile available, we can now build by simply running make:

    $ make -jN

More details

Comming soon:

Windows 10, Qt5.10.0, MSVC-2017 64 bits. XercesC XLM Parser and ICU builded from source.

Running the tests

TODO: Test Driven Development

Built With

Contributing

Any bug fixes or improvements are welcome.

Versioning

SemVer for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.

Author

Victor Gabriel Leandro Alves, D.Sc.
Copyright 2017-2018

Citations are welcome. 😃

License

This project is licensed under http://geant4.web.cern.ch/geant4/license/LICENSE.html

Acknowledgments

Thanks to:

The GEANT4 developers
The best free C++ IDE if have found: QT-creator Open Source
John Purcell's free and advanced C++ course

victorgabr/ProtonSimulation